Miriam Cahn – I AS HUMAN

Miriam Cahn (b. 1949) is a major figure in the art of her generation. Her most recent powerful demonstration of this was her showing of works at documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel (2017). This is reason enough to introduce, to a broad audience, her diverse oeuvre and her resolute, radical artistic approach.

Miriam Cahns Work
The work of Miriam Cahn has assumed many forms over the years and extends from drawing and painting via photography and film to performance art and sculpture. At the same time there are few artists that provide such a consistently literary commentary on their work as Miriam Cahn. The artist’s own texts accompany the works, dealing with her relationships with her family and close friends, her attitude to gender relations and her vision of the art business and contemporary current events. Without digressing into the anecdotal, she reveals her own family history in picture and text, addresses her own desires, her ageing process and her uncompromising quest for a completely independent career.

Humanistic principles are pivotal to Miriam Cahn. She is enraged by human rights violations, and hence becomes an admonisher and an advocate on issues that leave others speechless. Her rage is the motor that she deploys, and which serves as a source of power. Her work is subjective and expressive, and sometimes also aggressive. But Miriam Cahn chooses her expressive means carefully. She avoids routine, and rejects methods and styles that, in her opinion, have run into a dead end.

«Miriam Cahn not only engages with unfathomable and provoking subject matter, translating it into shocking images and scenes, but also emotionally pregnant moments of tenderness and affection, which unfold into a contemporary ‹picture book› of humanity.» Kathleen Bühler, Curator Kunstmuseum Bern

Exhibition «Miriam Cahn – I AS HUMAN»
As a retrospective covering the most important phases of her oeuvre, the exhibition «Miriam Cahn – I AS HUMAN» encompasses expressive works on paper, oil paintings with hauntingly beautiful colours, monumental sculptures and sketchbooks that have never been shown before. Many works have been created especially for the exhibition or are key works in the possession of the artist.

The title Miriam Cahn has chosen for the exhibition – I AS HUMAN – is on the one hand a feminist challenge and, on the other hand, revolves around the artist’s deliberate and implicit commitment toward human principles and the question of what comprises humanity at present. The artist’s images and exhibitions articulate, in an unequivocal and palpably visible and cogent way, her preoccupation with war, displacement and gender relations as well as her investigation of violence, love and the fragility of nature.

Because the artist is determining the hanging herself, the works can be read as a condensed commentary on and subjective interpretation of her own work and as a contemporary view of art and the world. A good reason for this is that Miriam Cahn, since beginning her artistic career, not only critically addresses political and social issues and events but equally engages with the question of the artistic methods she uses, her modes of expression and also the background and history of the media she selects. Self-determination in expression, methods and subject matter is her primary goal alongside the uncompromising confrontation with what is considered human in our time and age.

«The exhibition title I AS HUMAN is programmatic. Miriam Cahn strives not only to see things from the perspective of an artist, but to view the world as a human being who in our age and time should act humanely among fellow humans. She has always adhered to this ethical principle in her art.» – Kathleen Bühler, Curator Kunstmuseum Bern

Exhibition Stops
Following the exhibit at Kunstmuseum Bern, the show will be on display at Haus der Kunst in Munich and Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw.

Miriam Cahn – ICH ALS MENSCH
Haus der Kunst, Munich
12.07. – 27.10.2019

Miriam Cahn – I AS HUMAN
Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw
29.11.2019 – 23.02.2020

Other exhibitions: Miriam Cahn – DAS GENAUE HINSCHAUEN, Kunsthaus Bregenz (13.04. – 30.06.2019) and MIRIAM CAHN todo es igual de importante, Reina Sofia, Madrid (04.06. – 14.10.2019).

Curator
Miriam Cahn together with Kathleen Bühler, Cuator Kunstmuseum Bern

The exhibition is an enterprise of the Kunstmuseum Bern, in collaboration with the Haus der Kunst, Munich and the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw.

With the generous support of
Kanton Bern, Stiftung GegenwArt, Landis and Gyr Stiftung, Hans Eugen and Margrit Stucki-Liechti-Stiftung, Stiftung Erna and Curt Burgauer

Contact
Maria-Teresa CanoHead of Communication and Public Relations Kunstmuseum Bern – Zentrum Paul Klee , Tel.: +41 31 328 09 44

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